


slowly

by furyspook



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1390606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furyspook/pseuds/furyspook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jean is a mystery author, and one who is contemplating murder himself. </p>
<p>Chapter one: the establishment chapter! heck no</p>
            </blockquote>





	slowly

`--People like to write off murder off as something romantic, talk about how it’s incredibly difficult to wash blood from your hands. In reality, it’s fairly easy. Metaphorically speaking, we could be here for a while.`

Jean took a pause. Writing was difficult. Difficult as hell, really, and only a couple of lines could exhaust him. Still, there was nothing he would rather do with his time than stare absently at a text document for ten minutes before jotting a handful of words down, only to erase most of them to re-word or omit entirely. Suddenly frustrated, he rubbed harshly at his eyelids with the pads of his fingers. When the lines came to him, he’d been excited. It'd seemed like the perfect opening; interesting, vague, not too short. Re-reading, though, it seemed flat. Could he really work around this?

As he’d always done, monotonous actions he didn’t even need to think about now, Jean moused over the home button and quickly saved the document. There were only three sentences on the page, nothing he wasn’t used to but nothing that got any less irritating. While saving, jotting down a quick summation of a title, he noticed the ‘documents’ folder was stuffed again. More than half of them were one or two sentences, just as vague and ideas he wouldn’t remember if he were to open them again. He’d need to clean that out soon. After he saved, Jean slammed the laptop closed (slammed may not have been the best word, internal narration seemed just as awful as the actual writing) and leant back in his chair. He’d return to it, eventually. Who needed to rush on their third book? Not him, not right now. He was too irritated to get anything solid done, and it was still early. Perhaps later that day he would manage a couple of decent pages.

A buzzer sounded from the front door, and Jean cast a glance over his shoulder before standing to check on it. It was unusual he had visitors, let alone so early in the morning.

Looking through the peephole, Jean recognized a friend from school. Armin had actually gotten Jean in touch with his publisher, for which the older was eternally grateful. Without Armin, Jean supposed he may never have gotten so far as he had. He didn't hesitate to open the door, slouching against the door frame with one foot kicked up to the opposite side. "What've you got, Arlert?"

Armin didn't seem in any way deterred, stepping over Jean's ankle and into his apartment. "Morning to you, too, Kirschtein." The blond stepped out of his shoes and kicked them onto the worn mat in his path.

"Stayin' a while?" Chuckling lightly, Jean shut the door and followed Armin deeper into his home. Armin stopped at the kitchen counter, overlooking the majority of the apartment from his vantage point. Couch, chair, desk, laptop, center table, television. Nothing had changed since he'd seen the place last and, satisfied, he turned to Jean.

"I heard down the grapevine that _somebody_ had a date last night." Armin's hair fell across his face and he made no move to fix himself. Jean himself seemed more interested in pushing it back than Armin did. A sigh.

"Shit, right." The taller crossed his arms over his chest, averting his eyes off somewhere out the window. The small balcony seemed a good place to focus his attentions while he spoke, "Wasn't my most successful, Armin," _None of them really are,_ "I don't really feel like she's gonna want to see me again." Armin gave him a questioning look, and Jean pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. "I think it was you who told me t'be chivalrous, right? Well, I dropped the door closed on her face. Accident, I promise." While he couldn't _see_ the look Armin was giving him, he could _feel_ the incredulous eyes searing into the back of his neck. "Then I tripped 'er on the way outta' the place. Maybe she was just clumsy? That one wasn't my fault."

Armin shook his head, leaning more heavily over the counter. "Jean, how on Earth do you manage this _every time? _"__

Jean didn't answer, only shrugged. The action was accompanied by a snuffle, and a sigh from the kitchen. Armin was digging through his fridge, now, setting aside cartons of creme cheese, day-old sandwiches and week-old eggs. Jean wasn't that big a cleaner, and the fridge was cluttered with junk like that.

They didn't speak again for a minute or so, falling into a comfortable silence as Armin dug out the orange juice and gave it a quick sniff for quality before pouring himself a glass and rounding the counter to the living room. He settled in on the couch and reached for the remote.

"How long y'think you're going to be here?" Jean asked, more curiously than anything else. He had no problem with these surprise visits, but he would really rather Armin call first. It had been this way since college.

Shrugging, Armin took a sip of his juice, flipping through channel after channel without providing an audible answer. Jean shrugged as well, pushing away from the wall and moving back to his desk. The computer served as his arm rest while he watched his friend stare vacantly at the television. Perhaps there was another rough patch between Armin and his girlfriend. Once in a while he and Mikasa would argue, and it would end with Armin on Jean's couch in all manner of similar positions. Sometimes the blond would even sleep over, if he wouldn't return home. Jean was no good with that crap, so he made no suggestions. He even found that just _writing_ relationships was difficult, and in real life such things were far more complicated. Best not to get involved if he couldn't help.

Jean turned back to his computer, content to let Armin relax around his apartment until he saw it fit to leave.

____

Armin had gone home at around five in the evening, after spending the majority of his stay revolving around Jean's furniture and searching through his food cabinets. In that time, Jean managed to reword his opening and jot down a couple of ideas which stemmed from that. He was yet unsure where this was going, but he was intrigued. There were no characters, there was no plot, and there were only vague and half-assed chunks of dialogue across the page, but he felt like he could work with this. Still, it had been three hours since and he'd been picking it apart for details without success (see: putting off such a hopeless task by cleaning counters, watching TV movies, sleeping, etc). His apartment had grown dark in the time he hadn't been paying attention, switching off between an open window of solitaire and his writing.

His bedroom was down a small hallway off the kitchen, across from the bathroom. He stripped himself of his day clothes, replacing them with a pair of flannel pajama pants and solid grey t-shirt before sliding into bed. It took a great deal of adjusting to get himself into _just_ the right position, and even then his rest was disturbed. The couple in the apartment next door-- they weren't particularly sweet and he wasn't a fan of their family as a whole --argued almost nightly, and it just so happened that this was their shared wall. Jean could hear muffled insults, depending on the time of day the volume would change and he might catch the entire conversation. Tonight was one of those nights, and he intended to simply suffer through it until one or both left the apartment and, subsequently, shut their traps. Bills, it seemed, were the topic of conversation this time around. _If you'd both just_ shut up, _I'd pay your bills_ for _you_.

He wondered idly if he could integrate this into his idea. He hadn't yet worked with something so cliche as a feud between husband and wife. If he was clever enough, he thought as he rolled onto his side, it could be something secondary to the main plot. Something that added little details that were easy to miss until he put it all together for the reader.

Something under his head vibrated madly, and Jean jumped into a sitting position. He could never remember in the moment that he kept his phone beneath his pillow, and always scrambled about frantically to find the source. Perhaps if he moved his phone to the night stand instead...

A text. Jean opened the message, assaulted immediately by the brightness of the message screen. _Fuck! Turn it off!_

`How would you feel about doing some grocery shopping with me tomorrow?                                                         (Mikasa 8:45 PM)`

**Author's Note:**

> BORING ESTABLISHMENT CHAPTER  
> lmao uh?? hows it so far? i guess?


End file.
